Posts from the “sexism” Category

If you were following the #uNDC14 hashtag on Twitter last week you’ll have seen that despite our best efforts we didn’t manage to get the violence against women motions admitted onto the UNISON conference agenda. What we did manage to do however was ensure the issue wasn’t ignored. By anyone. I’ve put together a Storify that pretty much covers what happened – [View the story “Tell UNISON to…….” on Storify] – but I did just want to add a few more things myself. First off, for those who aren’t conference geeks and who have no idea what some of the jargon in that Storify means, here’s a brief timeline of what happened: On Monday 16th those of us involved in submitting the violence against…

Chris Davies MEP has today repeated his claim that Lord Rennard, who’s currently refusing to apologise for the sexual harassment he (allegedly) perpetrated against female Lib Dem party activists, “is not Jimmy Savile.” In the interview with the BBC’s Daily Politics show Davies went on to say: “Even if the crimes, alleged offences, did take place, and he of course denies it, this is not an evil man in any sense at all, he’s a good decent man.” Meanwhile, according to Michael White at the Guardian “a clammy hand on the knee” is not quite the same thing as “slavery, female genital mutilation and other horrors (that) are still widely inflicted on women,” and we probably need to all calm down a bit and get a sense of proportion,…

It’s the 25th November – the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and the start of the 16 Days of Action against Gender Violence Campaign. And as I haven’t been posting much recently, and as I’m pretty much laid up at home at the moment following a hip arthroscopy last weekend, I’m going to be blogging throughout it again this year. So without further ado, here’s my first post for day one of the 16 days, detailing 16 reasons (but there are so many more reasons than that!) why this campaign exists and why it’s still so important. 1. Because femicide. Between January and October this year at least 100 women have been killed through suspected male violence in the UK…

Okay, so I’ve had over a week now to collect my thoughts following the disastrous decision by delegates at UNISON Conference to reject a statement in support of believing women who report violence perpetrated against them, so if you’re not into the minutiae of trade union motions and amendments you’d best look away now. For those who’ve been following recent events on the left, the amendment (8.1) to motion 8 at this year’s National Delegate Conference (NDC) was pretty much a rehash of the statement MarshaJane and I came up with after UNISON Women’s Conference, and which hundreds of trade unionists, including many from UNISON, have already signed up to. You can read the original statement here – Our Movement Must be a Safe Space for…

I’m one of the signatories to today’s letter initiated by Rape Crisis South London calling on the PM to ban ‘rape porn.’ You can find details of the letter and a campaign briefing here – End Violence Against Women Here’s a link to the petition – Close the ‘Rape pornography’ loophole A link to the Guardian coverage here – Criminalise possession of ‘rape porn’, campaigners urge David Cameron BBC coverage here – Call to close ‘rape pornography website loophole And The Independent’s piece on it here – Campaigners call for change in ‘rape porn’ laws in wake of April Jones and Tia Sharp murders

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"Those of us who love reading and writing believe that being a writer is a sacred trust. It means telling the truth. It means being incorruptible. It means not being afraid, and never lying."
Andrea Dworkin

"Sex-negative feminism consists of, what, Andrea Dworkin and that weird Cath Elliott woman at the Guardian?"
Someone on the Internet